AKjitsu
Well-known member
I tried a Schuberth C3 Pro but the chin strap kept trying to strangle me so I took it back to the shop. The sales dude convinced me to try the Neotech and GT Air. I took the GT Air home and had a chance to try it out on a little 300 mile jaunt yesterday. It works. Absolutely zero wind gets in from underneath. None. Zip. Nada. And lord knows I tried. Stood up on the bike. Turned my head every way but off. Not a whiff.
Shoie must have put in some serious wind tunnel time on this design. The thing cuts through the air like a saber in the iron grip of a veteran cavalryman. No matter which way you turn your head there’s no grabbing, no buffeting, nothing. It took 150 miles before I realized I had forgotten to raise the windshield. And this at speeds some might consider imprudent. I religiously wear foam plugs when on the bike. But even given that, this thing is eerily quiet. At first, I thought that I’d gotten the instructions wrong and had the vent closed so I switched it the other way; causing the helmet to instantly turned into an oven. The venting is just plain spooky. No perceptible change in noise. You don’t feel anything blowing on you. Just a sudden drop in temperature. And if it really gets warm, you can crack the shield open on the first notch. With extremely minor adjustments in the tilt of you head you can direct this supplemental wind flow anywhere on your face you like. Nothing in your eyes and about the same venting you’d get from just wearing a do-rag and sunglasses.
The optics are pretty remarkable. Even though you’re looking through three lenses (sun shade, pin lock, and main screen) the clarity is as good as any helmet I’ve had. (And at my age I’ve had more than a few.)
The only thing I would consider a design and flaw (and a very meager one at that) is the chinstrap snap being clear up inside the neck roll. A small but IMHO unnecessary PITA.
And the downside of helmets with internal sunscreens is that you still have a clear face shield; which does nothing to hold down in-helmet temperatures: a BFD here in southern Arizona. But these small negatives are so completely overwhelmed by the overall goodness of the design that I’m holding onto this thing for dear life. In fact, I may buy another and stash it as a spare. With something that works this well you know some designer is going to find a way to **** it up on the successor model.
Shoie must have put in some serious wind tunnel time on this design. The thing cuts through the air like a saber in the iron grip of a veteran cavalryman. No matter which way you turn your head there’s no grabbing, no buffeting, nothing. It took 150 miles before I realized I had forgotten to raise the windshield. And this at speeds some might consider imprudent. I religiously wear foam plugs when on the bike. But even given that, this thing is eerily quiet. At first, I thought that I’d gotten the instructions wrong and had the vent closed so I switched it the other way; causing the helmet to instantly turned into an oven. The venting is just plain spooky. No perceptible change in noise. You don’t feel anything blowing on you. Just a sudden drop in temperature. And if it really gets warm, you can crack the shield open on the first notch. With extremely minor adjustments in the tilt of you head you can direct this supplemental wind flow anywhere on your face you like. Nothing in your eyes and about the same venting you’d get from just wearing a do-rag and sunglasses.
The optics are pretty remarkable. Even though you’re looking through three lenses (sun shade, pin lock, and main screen) the clarity is as good as any helmet I’ve had. (And at my age I’ve had more than a few.)
The only thing I would consider a design and flaw (and a very meager one at that) is the chinstrap snap being clear up inside the neck roll. A small but IMHO unnecessary PITA.
And the downside of helmets with internal sunscreens is that you still have a clear face shield; which does nothing to hold down in-helmet temperatures: a BFD here in southern Arizona. But these small negatives are so completely overwhelmed by the overall goodness of the design that I’m holding onto this thing for dear life. In fact, I may buy another and stash it as a spare. With something that works this well you know some designer is going to find a way to **** it up on the successor model.
